


Signals Crossed

by stellarparallax



Series: 300 Followers Celebration Fics [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canon Compliant, Crushes, F/M, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 20:26:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12689637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellarparallax/pseuds/stellarparallax
Summary: The one where Lance realises that it has always been Pidge.





	Signals Crossed

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! To coincide with me almost reaching 300 followers on tumblr, I ran a poll asking which rarepair my followers would like me to write for. Plance was the clear winner. I'm a little impatient when it comes to sharing things so here it is, my 300 follower fic, in spite of the fact that I haven't reached 300 followers lmao.

The battle on Naxzela was over, but the war was not. Time had been moving so fast since Lance, Hunk and Pidge first found Keith breaking into the Garrison to rescue Shiro. Sometimes, Lance forgot that it had been years since the soles of his shoes kissed the surface of Earth, since he last saw his family.  He wondered if his family stopped looking for him. He wondered if his family demanded that the Garrison explain to them what happened that led to Lance going missing, the same way that Pidge demanded that they tell her the truth about what happened to her father and her brother.

Out in space, if there was anything they had too little of, it would be time. Lance never had much time to dwell on how he missed the smell of his mother’s cooking or the laughter of his elder sister’s children, or how their lives have probably moved on from the point where he used to be part of them. Which is why he felt a sting in his chest when he saw the way Pidge was with Matt, and the way Allura was with Coran. It was the absolute lack of distance and distrust that he had forgotten he too once had.

It wasn’t like he resented them for having family onboard the Castle of Lions. He knew that their shared mission was bigger than being with family. If his family was with him, it would mean that they would have to fight alongside him, and he rather they stay on Earth light years away from him if it meant that they were safe.

Rationalisation, however, wasn’t always the remedy to longing.

 

* * *

 

Lance heard footsteps approaching where he was on the observation deck, searching for the constellations that Shiro had taught him when they had some time to spare. He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. He had long memorised how everyone else’s footsteps sounded like.

“Lance, can I join you?”

Still facing away from Pidge, he pat the empty spot on the floor next to him. He felt her footsteps draw closer as the vibrations from the floor beneath him got stronger, but what came after he didn’t expect. She sat next to him and rested her head on his shoulder.

He didn’t pull away. It wasn’t the first time that they had been in each other’s space, crossing boundaries they never did when they were back at the Garrison. He figured that must have been what Allura meant when she said that shared goals had a way of forming bonds that were never previously conceivable. They sat there in silence for what felt like an eternity before Lance finally spoke.

“Do you ever miss home?”

“Of course.”

“I always felt like you didn’t because you seem to love it out here and now that you found Matt-”

“I feel at home in space, but it’s still not home, you know?”

“Yeah.”

Lance didn’t move away when Pidge leaned in closer to him, didn’t flinch when he started to feel her soft hair brush against his neck.

“Do you?” she asked.

“I had a big family… I mean I still do. We were always close and now I feel like I have no one. I mean, I know that the mission is bigger than the individual but-”

“Hey, hey, I get that this really sucks and you miss your family, but you have all of us. If it makes you feel better, you’re family to me.”

“Thanks, Pidge.”

“Anytime.”

“Where’s Matt, by the way? Aren’t you two always attached at the hip?”

“He’s on a mission to deliver rations to a newly liberated planet. He’ll be back in a few days.”

“Is that why you’re talking to me now.”

“No. I felt like something was bothering you but I was so caught up in spending time with Matt… When you’ve lost someone once before… You’re just afraid of losing them again. I finally understand why Keith is so protective of Shiro. I’m sorry I didn’t come to you sooner.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

Suddenly, the watches on their wrists began beeping.

Since Naxzela, Coran had given them watches that would beep when it was the optimum time to go to sleep and wake up. He didn’t want to take any chances with them being groggy or sleep-deprived during any future battles.

“W-w-w-we should… We should probably... g-g-g-go to bed,” Lance stammered as he pulled away from Pidge, getting up to walk back to his room.

“Yeah, I’m just going to stay here a while longer.”

“Alright, goodnight Pidge.

“Goodnight, Lance.”

The walk back to his room felt like a winding road, going on and on unendingly. Finally, he reached his door and entered his room.

He pulled off his jacket and threw it onto the floor, making a mental note to pick it up the next morning. Next, his jeans came off and were replaced by a pair of loose cotton pajama pants. Once he felt comfortable enough, he switched off the light and slowly climbed into bed and got under the covers.

Later that night, he was jolted awake in his sleep with realisation that he had feelings for Pidge.

 

* * *

 

Lance watched in horror as Keith’s Galra ship went down after getting shot by the enemy. He barely registered the crackling of the intercom and Pidge screaming at him to get out of the direct line of the cannon. He was too focused on the millisecond that he hesitated, the moment that if he hadn’t missed wouldn’t have resulted in Keith’s definite injury and possible death.

He wasn’t good enough. He was never good enough.

“Lance, focus, we can’t lose you too,” Hunk yelled into the intercom, “Get out of the way!”

“LANCE!” Shiro yelled.

Everything just sounded like white noise. He let a teammate down. That’s all that was important. He watched his second monitor from the corner of his eye as the enemy cannon was powering up to take him down like it did with Keith.

It happened in a flash and all he saw was green, but he wasn’t getting hit. The Green Lion in front of him was.

“PIDGE!” he screamed.

Shiro called out to Pidge, but didn’t get any response.

 

* * *

 

The journey back to the Castle of Lions had been a blur. Lance remembered grabbing the Green Lion with Shiro. The lion didn’t get badly hit, but it was possible that the impact injured Pidge inside the cockpit. He vaguely remembered hearing Allura and Hunk saying that they got Keith. As soon as they touched down in the hangar, he jumped out of his seat and ran out of Red and towards Green.

“Please be okay,” he whispered.

Green was a crumpled mess on the floor of the hangar, having been placed rather than landed properly. He reached out to her face.

“Thank you for shielding me. Please, we need to check on Pidge now.”

Hunk and Allura arrived soon after, carrying Keith’s Galra ship. Hunk helped Keith back to his room while Allura ran to the bridge to get Coran with the x-ray machine for Pidge.

Green’s mouth opened up to let Lance and Shiro in.

“Remember not to touch her until Coran has checked on her. She might have sustained a spinal injury,” Shiro said, gently placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder.

“Okay.”

They stepped into the cockpit. From behind the seat, Lance could see that Pidge was still in it. He took a step towards her and froze. He felt the world collapse around him as he remembered all the times that he, on some level, always knew that he loved her. Even before Voltron, even before he found out she was a girl. He had always been weak for the firecracker who probably knew more words than the dictionary that he had back at home.

The cockpit was silent, but the only breaths he could hear came from behind him. He dropped to his knees, his hands shaking.

“Hang in there, Pidge, help is on its way,” Shiro muttered.

Suddenly, Lance heard a sharp intake of breath and a resounding stomp.

“LANCE, YOU IDIOT GET OUT OF THE-... Wait, where am I?”

“Pidge?”

“Lance?”

Pidge walked around her seat to look at the boy that was on the ground, crying his heart out, “Wait, you were there and I was… What?”

“You passed out for a while after you took the blow from the enemy cannon,” Shiro explained.

“Ah… WELL I wouldn’t have had to do that if SOMEBODY had listened when I told him to move! Why didn’t you listen? I could have lost you!”

“ME? What about you? What made you think that throwing yourself in front of me would be a good idea? I could have lost YOU!”

“Well, I… I,” Pidge’s voice trailed off as she stumbled and collapsed right into Lance’s arms.

“Hey, hey, easy,” he said, pulling off her helmet and running his fingers through her hair, “Your spine seems to be okay but you might have hit your head. I’ll take you to the cryopod, okay?”

“Okay,” she replied softly as her eyelids fluttered before her eyes closed and she fell asleep.

 

* * *

 

“You okay, Lance?”

Lance looked at the doorway of the castle lounge and saw Matt standing there.

“Yeah. How’s Pidge?”

Matt waited to get closer to him before answering. He left a slight gap between himself and Lance on the couch, unsure of whether the distance was enough for Lance.

“She seems to have gotten a bit of a concussion but it’s nothing a few hours in the cryopod can’t fix. Come on, Lance, what’s eating you up?”

Lance sighed, “Well, don’t kill me but I kind of sort of caught feelings for Pidge."

“What?” Matt shouted.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just… It’s hard not to like her, okay? She’s so smart and kind and… Once I realised how pretty she is, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”

“No, no, don’t apologise. What seems to be the problem with that?”

“She only sees me as a brother.”

Matt squinted, “Pidge said that?”

“Yeah.”

“Katie ‘my-sister-Pidge’ Holt, said that?”

“Well, it was implied, I guess.”

“What exactly did she say?”

“She said that I was family to her.”

Matt released a breath he didn’t realise he was holding, “Ah, that makes a lot more sense. Lance, I’m going to tell you something and you’re probably not going to listen, but you need to talk to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you need to talk to her.”

“No, I know what you meant by what you said but what does that mean?”

Matt took a deep breath before saying, “Married people are family too goodnight good luck see you tomorrow morning bye.”

Matt ran out of the lounge, leaving Lance completely blindsided.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading till the end! I've been getting lazy with my end note messages so I've been copy-pasting them for the last few fics. But it started getting weird because the more I read it the more I hated it? Idk.
> 
> I would like to thank @burnthoneyy and @anglmukhii on tumblr who let me run the idea for this fic by them. I would also like to thank the person who responded to the poll saying that they wanted a fic where Lance realises his feelings for Pidge. I had the idea for Lance being jealous that Matt and Pidge had family with them, but I wasn't sure how to move it past that. That suggestion was what led to this fic turning out the way it did. So thank you!
> 
> Lastly, thank you to everyone who responded and reblogged the poll, and of course to everyone who has been following me. Whether only recently or from the very start, I appreciate every one of you!
> 
> As usual, all comments and kudos would be welcomed! And you're always allowed to scream at me on tumblr @word-spielen.
> 
> Have a good day~!


End file.
